Condoleezza Rice, who was selected to work for the first Bush administration,
as well as the current one, thus constitutes a component of a network that
supports, and in turn is supported by, the Bush political agenda. By focusing
on the institutions funding Condi Rice throughout her life we may ultimately
gain a clearer picture of how those institutions fit within the decades-old
Bush family network. If successful, we may also get a glimpse of what this
network plans to do in the future.

Condi's talents were recognised when she was very young by successful members
of the community of which she became a part, and those talents were amplified
by concentrating resources into her educational development and providing
remuneration for her achievements in the form of fellowships and professional
career opportunities. These professional plums as those of us who have
struggled hard to find gainful employment well know”do not always grow on
trees; that is, not unless those trees are located within a well-cultivated
orchard. While reading this essay, the reader should be able to picture Condi
walking through such an orchard, and being handed ripe plums as she strolls
from one tree to another. The reader may wonder to whom that orchard belongs.

In Part One of this series, in reviewing the history of Viacom, we uncovered
the close arrangement spanning a period of decades between CBS and Prescott
Bush, partner in the investment banking firm of Brown Brothers, Harriman.
Prescott Bush's son, the first President George Bush, admitted that, besides
his Uncle George Herbert Walker, Jr., the largest single investor in his first
venture into oil production in the 1950s was Eugene Meyer, Jr., a long-time
client of Brown Brothers.[ii] Meyer, who purchased the Washington Post at
auction in 1933, had been appointed in 1930 by Herbert Hoover to be Governor
of the Federal Reserve Board.[iii]

The political upheavals in mid-19th century Europe saw a wave of immigrants to
the USA, especially California where gold was discovered in 1849. According to
Cary Reich:

Lazard Freres was something of an oddity in French financial circles: a
thoroughly French bank that had not been founded in France, but in the United
States, and that had got its start not as a bank, but as a dry-goods business Lazard Freres opened its doors in 1848 They began shifting their trading
skills from woolens to gold ingots and foreign exchange. By 1852 they had
opened a Paris operation, Lazard Freres et Cie., and in 1864 became
full-fledged bankers, reorganizing their San Francisco office as the London,
Paris, and American Bank, Ltd. With the opening of a New York office by
Alexandre Weill in 1880, and the establishment of a London arm three years
earlier, Lazard became the largest shipper of gold to and from Europe, and the
biggest U.S. trader of commercial bills.[iv]

Eugene Meyer's Background

Marc Eugene Meyer, the father of the man who would help to bankroll George H.W.
Bush's first oil company, arrived at the age of 17 in San Francisco from
Alsace, France in 1859, a penniless, but well-connected, son and grandson of
rabbis who had played not insignificant roles for Jews in the Alsatian civil
government. During the next few years Marc Eugene would alternate between the
"City of Paris" dry goods store in Los Angeles (Solomon Lazard & Company) and
the mining and industrial operations in San Francisco operated by his cousin,
Alexandre Weill. By 1868, not only was he made a principal partner of the Los
Angeles company, but he had married into the Lazard extended family network.[v]
In addition to operating a department store, the partners also financed and
managed the city's water system, and at age 26, Meyer also became the consular
agent for the French government, acting through the Lazard bank, to assist
those in France who desired to invest in the American West.

In 1873, two years before his son was born, Meyer bought out Solomon Lazard's
interest in the largest retail store in the Southwest and renamed the business
Eugene Meyer & Company. He would sell it in 1884 in order to operate the more
lucrative Lazard business in San Francisco involved in gold exchange when his
cousin, Alexandre Weill, returned to Paris.[vi] The Weill family continues to
be involved in Lazard Freres to this day.[vii]

In 1892 Eugene Isaac Meyer (often referred to as "Meyer, Jr.") briefly
enrolled in the University of California at Berkeley before following his
father to New York, where he was a partner. The younger Meyer transferred to
Yale and remained in the East for the rest of his adult life. Nevertheless, he
retained ties to the wealthy Jewish community in San Francisco where two older
sisters”married to Sigmund and Abraham Stern, heirs of the Levi Strauss
fortune would remain. The Sterns, as well as other descendants named Haas,
would play an extremely influential role in the funding of Berkeley.[viii]California investments play a strategic role in the Bush
financial network, as will be seen when we examine the plums in Condi's
basket.

Like, George Bush, the young Eugene Meyer, Jr. did not want to be a mere
employee in his father's bank; he wanted to create a business of his own. Upon
his graduation from Yale in 1895, Eugene's father granted him two years in
Europe, officially to study languages and foreign banking at the University of
Berlin, but the young man was drawn frequently to Paris. His father's sister
was married to Zadoc Kahn, grand rabbi of France, who was playing a central
role defending Alfred Dreyfus in a legal battle since called a catalyst for
the Zionist movement.[ix] Meyer was at that time extremely impressed by his
uncle's connection to the Rothschilds who shared their opera box with his
uncle.[x]
FULL STORY:
http://www.sandersresearch.com/Sanders/NewsManager/ShowNewsGen.aspx?NewsID=978